((THE ONES YOU LEAST EXPECT))
PROLOGUE: FALLING
Heyaz everyone!!! Please read my story, and review, cos it's my first try at fanfic and, yeah, It'd be nice to know if its any good, but yeah, I'll try to get the rest up ASAP....
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, if I did, I would be rich and writing for some publisher, instead of not pov and writing for a fanfiction site, so yeah...don't sue me, K???
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'If fears what makes us decide,
Our future journey,
I'm not along for the ride,
cos I'm still yearning,
To try and touch the sun,
My fingers burning,
Before you're old you are young,
Yeah I'm still learning.....'
Avril Lavigne 'Falling'
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"For Mithros sake Neal!" Yuki yelled, her brown eyes dancing with fury. "Don't you care that my homeland is dying? That people who are dear to me are dying?" face coldly tears streamed down her face, the only thing that cooled her hot cheeks, red with a rage you wouldn't expect of such a small woman...
"Don't YOU care that people are dying here?? In MY homeland?" Neal yelled back. 'How has it all come to this?' he wondered, why couldn't she see his side? He'd lived in Tortall all his life, and he couldn't leave it right now. Of course he was worried about the Isles, everyone was! But...what about his homeland?? What about everything he had worked so hard for? He couldn't just up and leave! What about his family? His knighthood? What about Kel?
'Wait' he thought 'where did that come from?' he hadn't worked for Kel, she'd just, well, appeared... 'and besides' he added to himself 'I've hardly seen her since the wedding...'
"What about my knighthood??" Neal yelled, his rage suddenly building again "I can make use of it here, I have a position! Power!" he paused, attempting to calm himself. He had learnt long ago there was no use yelling at someone if they couldn't understand you "In the Yamani's, I'll be a nobody, I'll be of no use to anyone...they might not even let me in!!!"
Yuki sighed as though he was the dumbest person in the world rather than a university candidate "Neal, you know how desperate they are! They'd let thieves and murderers in at the moment as long as they were willing to help!"
"So go find a murderer and have him as a husband" Neal drawled back, in a calm way he knew would annoy Yuki just as much as yelling "Because I, my pearl, am not going anywhere"
"A murderer would be more useful than YOU!!!!" she screamed, "You speak of not leaving your knighthood, yet you sit around here all day doing nothing, you are USELESS Nealan of Queenscove!!! USELESS!!!!" and with that she ran from the room, sobbing.
"Go argue it out with the king," Neal shrugged to himself "He's the one who put me here" With that, he thrust himself out into the cold, slamming the door behind him.
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'I'm standing out in the street,
the earth is moving,
I feel it under my feet,
but I'm still proving,
that I can stand my ground,
but my feet are bare,
haven't washed my hair,
to be lost before you are found,
don't mean your losing.'
Avril Lavigne 'Falling'
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Neal wrapped the ends of his shirt around his frozen hands, maybe Dom was right, maybe he was just a meathead. 'If I had to make a statement' he thought to himself 'I could have done it with a coat on.' He sighed, and turned back towards the warmth of the castle. There was nothing he could do to change Yuki's opinion, and tonight was too damn cold even to try. Kicking through the slush that coated the grass, he stared up at the sky and watched the last fading sunbeams give in to the dark.
Suddenly, he stopped, as though those dying rays signalled his own defeat. What if it was always too damn cold? What if he had to go on running mildly back to Yuki for the rest of his life? Running back to her like a weakling? Never getting his way, never making her understand.....
'Yuki's right' he decided 'I am useless.' But where else could he go? Cleon had been useless since he'd got married, he could try Dom....but he was barely ever at home anymore 'always out own some adventure with the own, the lucky man', He couldn't stay the night at Kel's, that would raise far to many eyebrows, and he hadn't talked to Merric and Owen in so long that he barely knew them anymore.
Oh, what was the point, there was no help for him, he was in far, far too deep... somewhere along the line he had single headedly lost everything that had once made him happy. Why had he become a knight, always at the mercy of the crown? Why had he become a husband? Always at the mercy of Yuki? Everything was so far gone now; there was nothing left for him. 'There's nothing left for me' he thought 'nothing left for me'
And it was with that thought running endlessly through his brain that Neal drew a small dagger from his sword belt, and placed it over his heart.